vaguely historical au with no name
by fascinationex
Summary: Nnoitra and Tesla in a vaguely mediaeval but anachronistic AU featuring: imprisonment, a little elopement and character typical violence. [One shot, complete, slash.]


The cell's dark. There are no windows for the condemned. But the stone that makes the dungeons so cold is also not well sealed. It's not like in the family quarters Nnoitra is used to.

There's a perverse satisfaction in knowing exactly what he has to do to push his father into physically imprisoning him in the dungeons, at least. Until now, he wasn't entirely sure that such a thing was possible.

If his disgrace had been private it could have been hushed up, of course. Right now Nnoitra will be gossip in every taproom for … oh, leagues.

There's no way the Odelschwanck family will have him now. They'd never disgrace their precious daughter like that. And in the dark, Nnoitra smiles at the thought.

There's a draught from somewhere and if Nnoitra closes his eyes and pays attention he can hear some of the world outside – the sounds from other outbuildings, a hammering, once even the high pitched squalling of a child.

Nnoitra can also hear the voices of his own guards.

"Can't be long now," one of them mutters to the next.

"I don't know why the king bothered spending so long on it - everyone knows how it's going to end."

"Politics, probably," says the first guard, in a tone that indicates he's never actually participated in any of the realm's politics.

"Stupid," says the other one. He makes a disgusted noise. "If I'd caught some degenerate bastard buggering my eldest–"

"Your eldest isn't the crown prince," says the first drily.

"You'd think that'd make it worse, reall – ahh, Lady Odelschwanck," he finishes, in a completely different tone. "I'm sorry, but I can't–"

"Stand aside," comes Nelliel's imperious voice, and then there's a terrified silence before the shift of armed boots outside.

 _Cowards_ , Nnoitra thinks, and he can't hold back a mean laugh. It is loud in the cell, and outside he hears the low conversation hesitate nervously.

"Stand aside," she says again, louder.

Nnoitra hears the scrape of a key in a lock and he unfolds his long, long limbs and gets to his feet. Nelliel can come to gloat over him while he's languishing in a cell if she likes, but he'll meet her on his feet.

His hair brushes the ceiling of his cell. It is too low and he is too tall.

The outer door opens, leaving only the bars of the secondary one between them. She looks prim as usual: her hair, which he knows is a bright sea green, is covered up in white, and she's dressed from neck to heels in a long sweeping dress. The lantern she carries throws sharp golden-orange light on the walls and streams her silhouette against the stone.

Nnoitra flinches. It's only been a few hours, but it's still plenty of time for his eyes to have adjusted to the dark. She's carrying something else, too, large and wrapped, but he can't look that close to the light source without flinching just yet.

"Nnoitra," she says flatly.

"Slattern," he responds, and feels the mean smile on his face curve wider. Her expression doesn't change at all.

"Lady Odelschwank," says one of his guards with a cringing servility, heels clicking as he approaches, _tap tap tap_. Nnoitra can't keep from sneering. "We really must –"

Nelliel ignores him totally and produces a key, which she uses to open the bars. Her hands look very small and pale there.

The barred gate of his cell swings out with a creak of protest from the stiff hinges.

Nelliel is the last person he'd expect this from. It is a trap. He is certain. He crosses his arms and waits.

"Don't look at me like that. This stunt was foolhardy – almost nobody will believe it in a week – but this's the least I can do for saving me the shame of a union with you," she says, and her soft voice is flat and direct. "Besides – there's no reason Tesla ought to suffer for his own overwhelmingly poor taste."

She hands him the bundle she's carrying, fearlessly coming within reach of his hands. The urge to grab her rises. Nnoitra is still. He stares at her small soft hand and waits for it to pass.

He unfolds his arms, finally, and takes the package. It contains a small sack of paper-wrapped food – salt pork, double-baked bread, some kind of liquor in a skin – his sword and belt, a knife.

"Be sure you get him out with you," she says, in a voice full of warning.

He bristles, because who the hell is _Nelliel_ to give him orders, but –

" _Nnoitra_ ," she says, with her jaw clenched and her eyes lowered from his.

"Fine," he hisses back.

It's not quite that he's known her too long, and he owes her too badly right now, to deny her – hardly, although he doesn't doubt she thinks both of those are true – it's that he's already half-decided to get Tesla before he leaves the keep anyway.

"My horse is saddled," Nelliel says, and then she turns on her heel and leaves.

The guards flinch from her. They have a job to do, but laying hands on the daughter of a duke isn't part of it, and there's not a lot else they can really do to stop her. Nelliel's soft leather shoes are soundless as she departs.

Nnoitra, though, they're under orders to prevent from leaving. But they turn to find him armed and very, very dangerous. And, well, Nnoitra can't exactly let them run around spreading news of his escape, can he? An escape won't make much difference to how they treat Nnoitra, of course. Nnoitra is a prince, even if he's getting closer and closer to being a disowned one.

But Tesla, well, he's not even a landowner. Him, they'll definitely –

Fuck Nelliel anyway. She had to have known he'd go after Tesla. She's a bitch, and she has some absurd ideas about her place in the world, but she's not an idiot. She knows it'll gall him to follow her instructions at any point, and that is precisely why she gave them.

This feeling of rising, frustrated fury is like a cute parting gift from her, he guesses.

…On the upside, at least getting caught letting a servant – not even a castle servant, at that, but a runner employed by a brewster in the lower town – fuck him in public solved the problem of ever having to _live with her._

If Nnoitra had ever married Nelliel, he knows he'd have killed her. She wouldn't even have to do anything to set him off. He daydreams about it sometimes, when he's bored. What it'd be like. How she'd sound. How her soft skin would give way, crushed to bruising under his big hands.

In that sense, her motives in getting him out of the city like this are perfectly transparent and very sensible.

Nnoitra leaves the bodies cooling in a pool of their own fluids. Nobody will come to relieve them for hours, at least, and by the time they're discovered he'll be long gone.

He steps outside, squints in the light, and immediately starts walking with a sense of purpose – mostly feigned. Nelliel left him some pretty abbreviated supplies, but they'll last two days if he's careful and Tesla's not a complete pig.

Unfortunately, Tesla, he knows, can out-eat a warhorse. He's always a complete fucking pig.

(Usually Nnoitra thinks it's funny to indulge him. He gets a kick out of demanding six course meals and staring as Tesla somehow manages to put away both their servings. He always finishes up satiated and heavy-eyed and sleepy, and then Nnoitra can laugh at his gluttony and pull him to bed and fuck him into the silk sheets.)

He takes somebody's bag – he has no idea whose – and casually breaks into a storehouse for several wrinkly old apples, some rough brown bread and a wheel of cheese. It'll do for now. He doesn't have time for better.

The cell where they're holding Tesla is on the other damn side of the keep, and it's nowhere near as pleasant as Nnoitra's was – of course. He's packed in with sixteen other grubby people, although on average Tesla is taller, cleaner and better-nourished, which makes him easy to pick out. He's also blond and a bit fluffy-looking, despite the dirt and the bruises.

The guards take issue with Nnoitra showing up to break him out.

"Were you told _not_ to do what your prince tells you?" Nnoitra wonders, unslinging the bag from his shoulder and casually dumping it near the wall. It's more or less out of the way there, should it come to blows.

Nnoitra is hoping it will come to blows.

"We were told you'd been imprisoned," says one of them, a little dry around the edges.

"Funny story, that," says another with a soft insinuation in his voice. "Is it true?"

"Why?" Nnoitra asks, peeling his lips back from his teeth. He licks them, too, tongue long and wet and obscene. "You want a taste?"

That despairing noise is probably Tesla, but he doesn't bother turning to glance at the prisoners.

"Don't go in for that, myself," drawls the guard, looking faintly disgusted.

"Enough," says one of the others, "you can't talk to the king's kid like that–"

"Even if he is a catamite," says the third.

Someone mutters something from in the cell, and the hard, answering sound is Tesla's voice. Nnoitra can almost physically feel his mortification at this evidence of Nnoitra's reputation in tatters.

Nnoitra, on the other hand, laughs. He hears his voice bouncing off the stones and he sounds wild and crazy and a little bit like a broken hinge left swinging in the wind.

Then he kills them.

It's hard to be offended by the commentary of dead men.

Guards don't spend nearly as much time training for long tournaments as Nnoitra has, apparently, and nor are they so committed to bloodletting. They're ludicrously easy to read, even three on one. (And Nnoitra _does_ get in trouble every summer for fighting dirty.)

It is fast and brutal: a shattered knee takes one out of the fight; a crushed windpipe and a gurgling death does for another; and one long crushing blow cleaves the last of them from shoulder to spine and leaves him leaking and twitching on the flagstones.

Nnoitra wipes his blade on the clothing of one of the guards and turns to the one still whimpering over his busted knee. He looms over him, tall and lean, a silhouette and a mean smile. He is not flattered by the guttering torchlight in the windowless room. The light gleams on his eye and on his teeth and on the cruel and dirtied edge of his sword, and the rest of him is in shadow.

He doesn't have to kill this one, but he does, because Nnoitra enjoys hurting people when they are helpless but want desperately to stop him.

Then he collects the keys and turns toward the big cell with the blade still bare. There's not really much point sheathing it; he'll need it again soon enough.

When he opens the bars, the other prisoners all squirm back and away from him. Tesla stands still, a rock in the tide.

"Well," he says impatiently to Tesla over the noise of the others all trying desperately to get away from him and the bare steel in his hand. "Are you coming?"

Tesla gives him a long look for a few seconds. He drops his eyes to the bodies, then raises them back to Nnoitra. Finally: "It's good to see you in such high spirits, sir," he says evenly.

Nnoitra smiles, a slash of long white teeth in the dimness. He props the sword on his shoulder and gestures Tesla out.

Tesla scoops up the bag on their way out. There's a rising rush of voices behind them after the door closes: prisoners dealing poorly with their near miss.

Nelliel's horse is, as promised, saddled already when they reach the stables – and Nnoitra's destrier is, too, mysteriously. He gives the pretty palfrey to Tesla, who views both animals with uncertainty. She's a little small for him, but a lady's horse is trained a lot gentler than a warhorse. Tesla also takes the knife.

It's as Nnoitra is contemplating how many men he's going to have to kill to get them out of the keep itself that the fire bell conveniently starts ringing.

"Meddling bitch," he mutters, torn between admiring her planning and being savagely annoyed at her interference. Annoyance wins out. It usually does, with Nelliel. "Let's go."

The bridge and the gates are devoid of any kind of guard when they get there – everybody has dashed off to investigate the hideous clanging of the fire bells. He doubts there's any such fire.

They hit the road.

* * *

This was meant to be my 'historical' fill for nnoites au week. I was hoping to do more with it? But since i am clearly not going to do anything about it to make it better or continue it further... I figured I'd post it as a one shot.

If there was anything you enjoyed about it & you feel like commenting please let me know. Otherwise have a good night.


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